Miguel snorted with a derisive laugh. “A coward for not getting into a fight with a man who can tear me into pieces without even breaking a sweat? Hell, I’d rather fight Dustin.” A nasty smile edged up the corners of his mouth and he set his coffee down, pushing away from the counter. “Of course, if you wanna level the playing field a little…”
His dark eyes flashed once more, like lightning spiraling through the midnight sky. Jax had no time to brace himself, and Sage knew it wouldn’t have done any good anyway. Jax went flying back so fast, so hard, the wall cracked when he slammed into it.
Sage snapped out, “Damn it, Miguel. If you tear up my house, you and me are going to have at it, boy.”
Miguel smiled a little. “Oh, I’m done.” He watched as Jax slowly climbed to his feet and then he met the vampire’s eyes with an icy glare. “I do my job—just like the rest of us. But I’m sick and fucking tired of you treating us like we are your subjects and must obey your every command.” With one hand, he pointed toward Misha. “That man holds information Morgan would damn near cut off an arm to get. Talk to him, or we will just take him Morgan.”
Blood gleamed in his eyes as Jax rasped, “This isn’t over.”
That was when Caris snapped. Before any of them had time to do anything, she stepped in front of her husband and said, “Oh, the hell it’s not.” She glanced at Miguel over her shoulder and said softly, “Drop your shield, Miguel.”
The shield fell and by silent agreement, Sage and Miguel both left the kitchen.
Caris waited until they were alone—well, as alone as they were going to get for the moment. The man sitting at the table had yet to say a single word, had yet to look away from his thorough contemplation of the wall in front of him.
“It’s over, Jax. You have to remember something—you’re a part of a damned team. You can’t keep expecting people to jump simply because you say so.”
“A team? I do not remember joining a team. I remembering agreeing to lead an army,” he said silkily, but he wasn’t even looking at her.
Fury splintered through Caris. Rising on her toes, she snarled into his face, “An army…yeah, I remember, where everybody is expected to follow your orders blindly, with no concern for anybody else. That’s not always the best way, is it, honey?”
Now he was looking at her. Something flickered in his eyes. “Caris, this is nothing like that. That will never happen again.”
Quietly, she said, “But it didn’t have to happen at all, did it, Jax? You can’t say you weren’t warned. Yet you did it anyway. You always have to be right, don’t you? And this time—if you’re right this time? What? You kill him?”
A muscle ticced in his cheek as he stared into her eyes. “He deserves to die.”
“No, he doesn’t. The man sitting there is a soldier, just like Miguel or Sage. Or me. Ordered to do something by another man who is so certain he is right.”
“You know nothing about him. You haven’t said a single word to him.”
Caris shrugged. “I don’t have to. All I have to do is look at him and I see it. I imagine that is just what Kelly saw when she looked at him.” She paused, looking at the man, and she couldn’t help the anger that rolled through her. “I want him hurt as well. But he didn’t hurt Anni…did you?”
Turning, she moved closer, stopping just before she would have touched the barrier still hanging between them and the lieutenant. The lieutenant looked up at Caris. His eyes were a pale, pale blue. “Didn’t I? I took her there.”
“Soldiers, lieutenant,” Caris said softly. “You take orders.” Her lashes lowered and her mouth drew tight in a frown. “You don’t take them from a man in a uniform, do you?”
“You’re very good,” the lieutenant said. “Telepaths usually cannot read a thing from me.”
“I’m not a telepath. Empath. The shields you use to keep a telepath out don’t work as well with me.”
“Ahhh…so you read emotions, memories, not thoughts,” he mused, nodding. “Empaths are few and far between. They are generally kept very much under wraps. My line of work could drive them nuts.”
“I imagine being a spy could drive nearly anybody nuts.” She paused a moment, cocking her head as she watched him. “What is your name?”
He replied, “Misha.” And then he went back to staring at the wall.
“You argue with him…a lot.”
Misha didn’t even bother to ask who she was referring to. A slight smile curved his lips and he nodded his head. “Yes, but it does no good. There are some leaders who listen when their people talk.” He glanced at Jax as he added, “And there are some who listen to no one.”
“What was this order?”
“It was not a single order, it was an objective.” Misha laid his hands on the table, flexing them, closing them into fists. “For the past twenty months, we have been attempting to establish contact with the unit that calls itself the Firewalkers. The leader…Morgan…has had contact among the underground, but too many times we have had traitors slip among our ranks. We could not let them come to us. We searched for somebody besides Morgan. He is too…adamant that we trust him. Our leader does not trust anybody who is as insistent as Morgan has become.”
“Morgan has reason to be insistent,” Caris said quietly.
“You expect me to believe that you come from the underground?” Jax growled, slamming his bloodied hand against the barrier.
Misha said softly, “I care little what you think.” He sighed, lifting his hands to scrub them over his face. “I want this war over…that is what I want. And I am willing to sell my soul to the devil to see it done, to see that no more innocents are lost because of those government bastards.”
There was a black, roaring agony inside Misha. She could feel it. It was so strong, it battered at her shields, choked her. Battling it down, she asked hoarsely, “Who did you lose, Misha?”
For a long time he was silent, and then finally he took a deep, shaky breath. He looked up and Caris felt like she was looking into hell’s abyss, the pain was so great.
His voice was flat as he replied, “My wife. My daughter. Alana went to her parents. They hadn’t seen Melissa since she was a baby.” He paused, swallowing. “Melissa’s gifts started emerging early. We’d cautioned her, You can’t let anybody know. But she trusted her grandparents. Lissie was a pyrokinetic. She was so proud that she could hold fire and it wouldn’t burn her. Wouldn’t burn anybody unless she let it.”
Caris heard Jax’s rough breath but she was too focused on Misha. Tears already burned her eyes but she tried to keep them from falling. “Your in-laws…they called the police.”
He nodded. “Yes. Alana’s father was a retired Marine. He…he loved his daughter, but I think he also believed the line that was standard fifteen years ago. That all Firewalkers were considered capable of rehabilitation.”
Rehabilitation—the glossed-up word for the torture and brainwashing that the Federated Government had attempted to use when they pulled Firewalkers out of their beds, off the streets. “What happened, Misha?”
“‘The bad men came’…Lissie only knew them as the bad men. She screamed it out to me. I can still remember. Dear God, I pray she didn’t realize that her grandparents were the ones who turned them in.” His voice wavered and finally there was some sign of the turbulent emotions Caris could see in his eyes. The stoic lines of his face seemed to crumple and tears began to fall to his cheeks.
“Lissie was telepathic, not strong, at least not yet. She was only five. She could speak with those she had a connection with. Her mama. And me.” He closed his eyes, lifting his face to stare at the ceiling, but Caris knew he wasn’t seeing the painted plaster. “The bad men came. And they grabbed Alana. But they wouldn’t touch Lissie. She was burning. Strong emotion can make a literal field of fire burn around an untrained pyro. I imagine you’ve had some experience with that. They told her if she didn’t put out the fire, they would kill her mother. Bargaining…with a five-year-old child.”
“They killed her mother and Lissie lost control?” she asked quietly. She couldn’t see anything beyond the black maw of grief his emotions had become. What had been so clear was now nothing but darkness, nothing but grief.
Misha blew out a shaky breath as he lowered his head. Broad shoulders slumped under the sturdy black cloth of his uniform. “Lissie…she could also pick up random thoughts. I think she probably picked up something from Alana. We’d talked about it, you know, my wife and I. If we were ever taken and couldn’t escape, it might be better if we were dead. I don’t think Lissie lost control. I think she picked up something from her mother and burned the house down…well…on purpose.”
As if he couldn’t stand to stay seated any longer, he stood up, but the kinetic shield around him kept him from moving away from the table. He bent over it, his hands closing convulsively around the edge, squeezing until his knuckles turned white and Caris heard something crack.
“I got there just a little too late, but when I saw the house, I knew. If Lissie had lost control, the fire would have been different. The fire would have been burning out of control. But it was just the house. Just the house and my family…”
He turned away from them and Caris stood up and turned around. Jax’s face was stony and pale. Reaching out, she closed her hand around Jax’s wrist and tugged until he followed her out of the room. She sought out Miguel and said quietly, “He isn’t going anywhere and he’s no threat to us. Let the shield down.”
“Caris…”
She wheeled on her husband, long golden strands of hair flying around her head. “Why did you bring me, Jax? Did you want my opinion? I’m a helluva a lot better judge of character than you. You see only black and white. This is a lot more complex than that.”
Turning her head, she looked at Miguel and just arched a brow.
He shrugged one shoulder and replied, “Already done, sweetheart.”
There was no sound from the kitchen, but Caris could still feel him. Tears stung her eyes and she breathed out a shaky sigh as she walked across the room to stare out the window.
She was going to feel that wrenching pain in her dreams for weeks.
Chapter Eight
Misha either had ice water for blood, or balls of solid steel, Sage decided. He sat there as Jax paced around him in a tight circle. Right now, the way the big vamp was pacing around the lieutenant, it reminded Sage of a tiger. He’d only seen one of the big cats once, when he was sixteen and he had ‘ported himself and Kelly into the Chicago Zoo for her birthday.
Jax had that same predatory stare, the same aura of barely caged danger. Instead of a cage made of systeel or plastin, though, Jax was caged by the woman sitting across from Misha. Her eyes looked entirely too haunted. She had told him what Misha had shared with her earlier, so he understood why her eyes looked so dark and troubled.
Turned out, Misha had been a cop in his former life. He had just shrugged when Sage had asked him how in hell he had pulled that off. “I…tend to blend in.” He smirked a little. “Been called a chameleon. I don’t know if it’s a gift or if it’s just me. But people look at me and tend to see what they want to see. It’s how I got these.” He stroked a finger across the bars on his collar.
“How long have you been in the Army?” Miguel asked quietly.
“Nearly ten years,” Misha murmured. “I was placed in the accelerated program for officers right out of basic.”
Miguel winced. “You’ve been hiding for ten years? Hell, I was going nuts after one.”
Lifting one shoulder, Misha said, “I believed I could do some good.” He sighed and for the first time, Sage saw the weariness in his eyes. “I tried to go to the Firewalkers, right after…after the fire. But Morgan wouldn’t accept me. He trusted no one who had worn a uniform, I was told.”
He flicked a glance at Miguel, smiling a little. “He has learned to bend his rules.”
Miguel shrugged. “Eh, I saved his ass once. I think he decided I might come in handy.”
“And I imagine you have,” Misha murmured. “I landed elsewhere—with Luc.”
Silence fell at the mention of that name. Whether or not Lucian Deveraux indeed led the underground was something that had been rumored for years. Man or myth, nobody really knew. There had been a boy by that name, but he had disappeared nearly fifty years ago.
He’d come from the bayous that had taken much of the land in Louisiana after three devastating category five hurricanes had struck in the twenty-third century. Much of the land had been given back to nature. The government had wanted to rebuild, but the land had become too swampy, too wet to support any large community. Smaller communities had settled in, and had proven to be much more resilient, more adaptive.
Legend said that boy who had lived in the bayous had been a genius. He had organized very successful protests against the government’s treatment of the Firewalkers—nearly twenty of them during his three and half years of college. But just a few weeks into his last semester, he’d disappeared.
Nobody heard anything about him, nobody saw him. Years passed and the boy was forgotten.
Then, at the first public execution of a pyro, two unknown Firewalkers had appeared.
Or at least, it had been the first one to be scheduled. It was said that Luc and an unknown teleporter had grabbed the pyro just before the firing squad had been ready to open fire with las-rifles.
The government still insisted that Lucian Deveraux was not a real person, but a figment invented by desperate minds. But the legend held that that figment had been seen repeatedly, and always, he was seen flaunting his abilities in the face of the government.
When the rumors of the underground had started, there had been repeated press conferences. The government had adamantly denied the existence of a secret underground population. It was also rumored that Luc had appeared at each conference.
That had been the start of the Firewalkers’ movement. It was almost as if seeing one man brave enough to face the government had given courage to those hiding among the general population. Small factions formed, joining together to sneak the children away when threats appeared. Strikes were made against local detainment centers and more and more Firewalkers were “liberated” before they could be executed or reprogrammed.
And as more and more people became active in the movement, less was seen of the man rumored to have started it all.
It was pure speculation that the unknown Firewalker was really Lucian Deveraux. After disappearing for so long, many people doubted that the boy had lived.
And even fewer believed that the man who led the underground movement was in fact Lucian.
The silence stretched on as they all tried to digest that piece of information. It was Jax who ended it with the simple question, “And who is this…Luc?”
Caris glanced up at him. “I thought he was just an urban legend.” She explained some of the stories behind Lucian and finished up saying, “Rumor has it that he leads the underground movement.”
“Oh, Luc isn’t a rumor.” Misha glanced at them with a smile. “He’s a focused, driven bastard who often can’t see the forest for the trees. But he’s saved thousands of lives. He’s a good leader, sometimes a cold one. He’s let the resistance become his entire life…and sometimes that blinds him to everything else.”
With a faint smile, Sage looked toward Jax. “That sounds like someone I know.”
Jax didn’t respond. “How was allowing one of my people to be captured and tormented— How was that supposed to help in any way? Anni’s a brave woman who was only trying to protect an innocent girl. I fail to see his reasoning.”
“For the past twenty months, we’ve tried to establish contact with the leaders of the surface resistance. Twenty months. Once, there was a boy and his mother…she was one of our watchers. Her son, Erik—you might remember the name—was a Firewalker, but his talents hadn’t emerged yet.”
“Erik…” Sage muttered, closing his eyes. He remembered the boy, all rig
ht. They all did. He had been bait for the Firewalkers. The resistance had fallen into a very clever trap and if it hadn’t been for the combined efforts of several of the Firewalkers, the Army might have caught them.
Erik’s mother had been killed, but none of them had known how. Erik hadn’t remembered and chances were that he never would. He was safe and secure with the underground now.
Misha smiled. “You remember him. His mother’s name was Leah. She was just a watcher. She wasn’t gifted, but she was sensitive. She could see the gifted before their gifts emerged. She should have had a few more years before she had to come underground—Erik was so young. But the gift came on him early. From what our healers can tell, it was forced out. Somehow, we think that Leah came under suspicion. You know most of the rest,” he said. He rose from the chair and walked past Jax without blinking an eye. He pressed the prep unit and waited for the glass of artificial juice.
Everybody was silent as he took a long drink. As he carried the glass back to the table, he started to talk again. “Before that, was another—James Conlin. He was waiting for a meet with Morgan in New Angeles. They were meeting in an open air café, in broad daylight. Morgan was late. A little too late. We found out later that there was an incident involving a strange man—one who wasn’t human.” He glanced at Jax.
“You know much about us,” Jax said, a muscle jerking in his cheek, his eyes glittering.
“Hmmm.” Misha took another drink of his juice before he continued. “Conlin was leaving. He was detained, and we didn’t find out until he was already scheduled for execution. I usually have that information before it happens, but I was…tied up.”
“Tied up?”
“We cannot be in two places at once, Sage. Not even those with gifts like you and I.” He was silent for a minute, looking lost in thought. Finally, he shook his head and looked back up at them. “It was finally decided that perhaps the most efficient way was to find a Firewalker, establish a contact there. Through you, we can reach Morgan. Luc is willing to meet Morgan on your terms, on your ground. But we had to make sure it wasn’t a trap. The Army has baited some very attractive traps for both sides. Our people as well as yours.”
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